Las Vegas Black Jacks

Categories: Branding + Logos / Graphics

Client: Las Vegas Black Jacks

Project Details: With professional hockey poised to deliver Las Vegas it's first major league professional sports franchise, NineDezine recently accepted the call to competition and developed a Name and Brand for the NHL expansion team that would be located in Sin City. This gave us a great opportunity to demonstrate our mission - that a great process can inform great design. Here are the results of our process:

Description: Sin City is synonymous with many things – gambling among them. Naming the team after the mobsters who built Vegas or gamblers who keep the lights on seems too easy, although it does somehow seem appropriate (and kind of cool). Or maybe there’s another solution, which is how we landed on…

Nickname:The Las Vegas Black Jacks:, named after the Black-tailed jackrabbit, an American desert hare most common in the western US. The Black Jack has long, powerful legs – obviously, a trait that would be desirable among hockey players. As a bonus, there’s the obvious tie-in with the most desirable hand in the world’s most widely played casino game.

Colors: Blue and silver. “Lucky Blue” comes directly from the Nevada state flag. “Strike-it-rich Silver” refers to Nevada’s history of silver mining, lending Nevada the nickname, The Silver State.

Logo: The primary logo combines the serious-looking hare with the Black Jacks’ word mark. Within the word mark, the “J” in Jack is transformed into a hockey stick. On either side of the J are the “K” next to a diamond and an “A” with a club in the negative space – a King and Ace, which create the hand Black Jack. Finally, King and Ace would also be the nicknames of the two costumed characters that run through the stands firing t-shirt cannons and distracting people from watching the actual game.